GENERATOR Poems

All words copyright Bill Nathan, "Generator 4", Ohio, 1990

TENSIONS ON

I could have predicted that sensation.
A clicked tongue and drinks passed out.
Coinciding with the Visitor
When s/he stands, when s/he breathes
s/he
is a memory in the arty rain.
Offend quick with my busy mouth
stuck out the window, something through
the open window, I hear something
then shut it out.
I am allergic to never finishing.
Anticipates your exposed attitude/audition.
Your custom behavior for each acquaintance.
Then you swell up for a moment.
I want to stand aside, refrain from the hunt
which passes judgment.


----------------------------------


WITH IN SIGHT

To that glimpse of convict who died on
his own spear, we could have been appealing to peace.
Us cuddling for pledge points & he becomes the
recognized one, like a pulsebeat, an accomplice,
relationships borne from the low growl of debates,
pit-gas hissing & vexing in metropolitan vortices,
My name releases the speed of mustangs.
Thank you for never gathering on my account,
for I have developed a lovely amnesia,
and I am madly in love with the search for taboo.
When horizontal I lose my earth-bound POV,
a charming space of layers I get increasingly
stuck in.


-----------------------------------


IN POSITION

Sits the tea
Silts the tea
drifting down
halfway down

The wind blows
the ambition
site back

I copy out the details

----------------------------------


MY QUIET JUMP


I was going to execute a plan this time.
The old decomposing ideas made me age it seems.
The intention is still to write the silent conversation.
Whether or not, I can't help but be moved.
As the summers, the winters, as they back up,
the pungent moments dim and drift away, encurling.
This, I think, is the "insatiable hole" in conversation.
A greater potential wrought by breaking
mentally down.
The garland that you wrapped has a timeless dividend.
And the word strikes the rubble and disappears.
And the dark wave swallows the oar;
my sun, collapsing in the iron dunes.


----------------------------------


TREMBLE

I am no more than the casual phrase.
All roads to me are beaten & battened.
I am a tower of clattering work,
built above a buried vein
of unstable remnants.
Disinterested on a haycock summer afternoon.
Unsayable passion frames my private journalism.
Questions which trouble cultivate my most
valued skin.
Beyond the occasional it is plain that I have
become
remarkably thinner, here & there translucent,
vulnerable - there leadened, kindness down
an asphalt culvert.
THEN: every child in her rhythmical swing knows

the

funny

end of the universe.